by LBFrom right to left:
Chapter 49 – Shooting, Surprising, ShootingSo, this week was great. Since I last wrote, my camera production class went to Union Square Park and spent most of the day shooting. The day before I wrote a script in class and my shooting partner Tara and I put together a shot list.
The script was about the Oscars, which were happening the next night. We went up to people, prank style, told them we were from DCTV and ABC was debuting something new at this year’s red carpet event, The Hipster Fashion Police. We said we managed to get a copy of some of the categories, nominees and wanted to get people’s opinions about who would win.
For example, one of the questions was: who has the best beardage? Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix or Gov. Chris Christie who, admittedly doesn’t have a beard but probably used them in the whole George Washington Bridge scandal.
Pitching pilots to networks is somewhat of an art. I mean, it’s not Adele singing or Linda Lovelace eating a cucumber, but it does take a certain skill. My writing partner, David Isaacs and I have been pitching pilots for years. We don’t sell them all but we have sold quite a few. So we have some sense as to what’s involved. (And it’s closer to what Linda Lovelace does.)
Generally, we keep our pitch down to about fifteen minutes. We never read. We may go in with a sheet of bullet points or no notes at all. We explain the premise, the theme, and what about the project excites us. We introduce the characters briefly, and offer possible story suggestions for down the line. Along the way we integrate a few jokes.
The idea is to spark their interest in a way that they can actually picture the show on their network. We answer any questions and keep the dialogue going for as long as we can. The more they talk about it, usually the more interested they are.
This probably is a place we shouldn’t go cuz…well, cuz many of us here at TVWriter™ just plain assume that creativity and madness go together. Which means that reconciling meds that stop the madness with our writing needs sometimes becomes overwhelmingly stressful all by itself.
But that’s just, you know, us:
by Gila LyonsI had rarely felt so alive, so close to the spitting pulse of energy and awakened life. I moved from the Berkshires to New York City for graduate school, to pursue an MFA in writing. My first year was an exhilarating blur of freedom and power. Each morning when I stepped out of my apartment, I felt like I owned the world. I felt beautiful and talented and young. I knew famous people, I was creatively inspired, I was meeting regularly with editors and publishers who were interested in my writing. My only responsibilities were to read, study with some of my literary heroes, write, and teach part-time. But by the end of my third year in the city, an anxiety disorder that had plagued me since the beginning of my life, and would flare up and calm down on a strange circadian rhythm of misery, had gotten so bad it reduced me to a quivering non-functioning bundle of raw nerves. I barely squeaked by in my last semester of my program, writing, reading, and teaching between emergency room visits, therapy appointments, panic attacks, and crippling phobias.